Comments

What I would like to see is that one station would have just single function. That would leave us possibility to add more screens & computers to our bridges and actually move around in our bridge. For minimalistic tabbed feature relay could just pick an additional station for him to care.

I would love to have similar option available also for enginering. so damagecontrol & rest of enginering could be assigned separately.

As for direct answer for your question I like option 2 as its more graphical and has this little "tetris" puzzle in it.

For engineering that option is available. At the "additional screen". There are 2 screens, one for damage control and one for power management. Same for the science database, that can also be ran as a separate screen.

I'd like to see more Deus Ex style inventory, since it's makes the inventory interesting feature and requires a bit of thinking for complex objects.

As @HenriVesala stated it would be nice to have those additional views as a separate module. For me it would mean that when building a bridge I would have freedom of putting those additional views/stations anywhere.

For example: Cargo doesn't require attention all the time but occasionally (load/unload). So I would put my cargo ministation a bit farther from Relay station and have anyone who's available at the time to operate it when f.e. airlock needs to be opened. Similar kind of setup would be nice to have for engineering (extract damage control). This means more work for captain to organise people around to do important tasks.

OT: How would one use those additional views in science or engineering? It's not documented anywhere or doesn't show up in any screenshots I've seen.

For engineering that option is available. At the "additional screen". There are 2 screens, one for damage control and one for power management. Same for the science database, that can also be ran as a separate screen.

Brilliant! I checked them out and noticed that you cant recalibrate shields either from damage control nor power management. So having traditional engineering view is required for that.

If more content is required for Relay then it should have some sort of metagame build in it. I have this fear that while simple inventory view adds more content it is not really interesting to interact with.

On the other hand if its just for information whats on the ship like database then list is enough.

If more content is required for Relay then it should have some sort of metagame build in it. I have this fear that while simple inventory view adds more content it is not really interesting to interact with.

For simple 30 minute games I would think Inventory might not be a feature that most scenarios would use. For longer games I see that it could be used quite a bit. This would especially be true for peaceful scenarios.I'm guessing we're going to be seeing a Planet Express ship mod (Futurerama) in the future

I think the inventory system can contribute in multiple ways. One is immersion. Having actual inventory that shows that you are transporting something in a scenario helps in this.Next one is cargo management. As you can only carry a limited amount, you need to manage this properly.With this comes the next bit. If you have cargo, you can carry interactive things as well, which can help you in the game.Emergency backup batteries? Replacement warp core? (fully recharges the warp drive) Hull patches? Repair nanobots? A stack or spare homing missiles? (Takes 5 minutes to unpack?)Naturally, this cargo should also be possible to access from the scripting interface. So you can have scenario specific cargo. Or even build that "free roaming" scenario that you always dreamed off, with station trading and stuff.

Me and @HenriVesala quickly drafted a proposition what the cargo would look like.

The image mostly explains itself.

- Items can be moved by drag'n'drop- Moving an item take time, so it's not instantaneous- Size of the areas vary by ship type (smaller ships have less room)- Some areas only available on certain ship types- Sized and shapes of cargo may vary (nukes take 4 slots, not every items are rectangles)- Usable areas could shrink from hull damage.- Cargo in damaged areas could be unusable or destroyed (really bad things could happen if nuke is damaged?)

For hangar we've come up with multiple ideas:- Basically loading and unloading area usable only while docked and it cannot hold any items during any other time- It could be usable anytime but when it's not empty it prevents the ship from jumps and warp drive- It might contain some smaller crafts (shuttles & fighters) and equipment for them if such things will be implemented in the future (this wont prevent warp)- Cargo could be dropped to space via hangar.

In my opinion, I would base this type of setup on the engineering screen with "cargo teams" to move supplies around. The Cargo Teams would move around the ships like the Damage Control Team. They take time now to move, but if they are "burdened" with cargo, they could take longer.

Drag and Drop would probably require daid to do non-trivial UI updates.

Deus ex style is far better imho. This could also solve the rather dull resupplying for the relay officer. Instead of toggling all the buttons to request everything, the relay guy would have to frantically drag everything from the station.

If the inventory was already cluttered, this makes it harder to quickly resupply, which adds a skill challenge to this bit aswell.

I'd also add stuff like "missle containers" -> An item in your cargo that can hold multiple missiles. If a normal missile is 2x1, you'd make a 5 missile container 8x1 (so you get one "free" storage slot) at the cost of having less freedom (seperate missiles can be fitted in small open bits of cargo)

Things like ammo should stack up to a certain amount. Even Deus Ex does that, because as you can see above, space runs out VERY quickly.

I like the idea of cargo handling teams. For bonus points, they should require space to move around in, so you can plan out whether you want paths so everything is accessible, or just jam pack the bay full of junk.

The only ammo that we have at the moment is missiles. Stacking up for single bullets would be something you want, but I don't think that's required for 'big' things such as missiles (most ships will have about 10 of em). Larger ships will probably use the stacking modules anyway as more 'freedom' to get everything out of the cargospace isn't that big of a factor.